Inheritance

I write now with my father’s pen
Old steel has assumed my
Ragged pencil’s place
Smooth and worn in my
Calloused fingers.
Daughter at my breast
I remember my father’s stories
As my own swirl and foment
Beneath the creased brow
That is my other inheritance.
Not a gentle man, nor a good one
But a crafter of careful lines
Who spoke limited truth
To lasting effect.
What of him remains
But my own comfortable lies
Sweeter than fact, more palatable
Harder to deny than the
Elusive verisimilitude
Of others.

Liberal Litterati

Seedy, lithe and well-oiled
In our uniform, non-conformity
Liberal minds squeak protests
From bedsit to ballroom
Decrying as fashion dictates.
Few trouble to research topics
Alien to a readership whose
Well-formed, lively sentences
So closely mimic their own.
We are all experienced here, we,
Residents of the four-walled glasshouse
What value the grass-roots witness?
When florid imagination lends itself
So well to high-def. verisimilitude
Without the constraints of
Post-traumatic stress
We rail again, against
The order of the world
Our words perpetuate
And tilt our glass
To toast the common man.

The Cuckoo and the Nightingale

Tinkle on the ivories
You’re waiting in the wings
Listening as others wheeze
The skinny croaker ‘sings’
She got the job through hours spent
Mouth open, on her knees
Her sound resembles native Kent
While dulcet tones that please
You warble on, just marking time
Stood, shuffled to one side
The notes that soar not hers, but mine
A gift they chose to hide
So as dramatic climax nears
On anorexic face
Fat lady singing through the tears
While mask remains in place